The Hindu : National : A virtual ‘shopping mall’ for all-in-all insurance

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Sunday, Nov 04, 2007
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National

A virtual ‘shopping mall’ for all-in-all insurance

Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore: Choosing the right insurance policy — be it for life, travel, vehicle or health — remains a challenge for most lay customers in India. Now some help is here — a ‘neutral’ Web resource — which means it is not owned or controlled by any one insurance company, but consolidates information from dozens of competitors and allows users to do ‘comparison shopping.’

For example, if you enter your age and that of family members, how much cover you plan on taking, the search engine at www.insurancemall.in will check the offers of multiple companies and present the result in a table. There are tools for buying the policy online ... and even monitoring it whenever you like.

Bonsai Insurance, the company, which created the virtual ‘Insurance Mall’ earlier this year, has recently added two more areas — motor and life insurance. Together with the existing insurance arenas of health/sickness, home, travel and student special, this makes this Indian initiative arguably one of the broadest portals, worldwide, in the insurance comparison business.

Speaking to The Hindu, Mahavir Chopra, Bonsai’s Director (e-Business) said the new ‘quote engine’ for vehicle insurance was a flexible tool and would offer quotations for every new car as it came into the Indian market.

The site also facilitates policyholders to make claims on their policies directly from the website.

Bonsai operates offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and in New Jersey, U.S.

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